Complementarity

Complementarity: a favorable relationship between the two sexes where each completes, fulfills, balances, and perfects the other. The opposite sex is seen as desirable and as having something to contribute to us. We see ourselves as having something to contribute to them too. OSA is itself a sense of complementarity.

Complementarity can be measured on a scale: beneficial (all the positives just mentioned) to detrimental (harmful, destructive). Ambiguous means multiple possibilities, uncertainty, doubt.

Compare your female gender concept with your self-concept in the 7 categories. How complementary is the relationship between you and women?

Pg 186, continues from section on Genderedness

It’s this harmonic resonance that occurs between men and women that creates complementarity. The term complementarity refers to a favorable relationship between the two sexes where each completes, fulfills, balances, and perfects the other. It implies that we see the opposite sex as desirable and as having something valuable to contribute to us. For men, it means seeing women as something that can complete and fulfill us—as our other half. And it means seeing ourselves as having something valuable to contribute to women as well and as being strong enough to make our contribution to them without being drained by their needs. We aren’t meant to be without our opposite. We’re built to complement—or finish—each other just as the black and white of yin–yang make a complete whole.

Now let’s take these concepts one step further and look at how they apply in relationships. It’s a man’s role to complete his woman’s femininity by being firmly grounded in his own masculinity. This allows the woman to remain in her feminine energy and complete her man’s masculinity. Author and speaker David Deida talks about this concept in his book, The Way of the Superior Man. He uses the term “polarity” to describe the opposing male and female energies. He describes what I and others have observed—that when men disconnect from their own masculine power, women naturally summon up masculine energy from within themselves to stabilize the relationship and to get things done. So if I slip into my passive shadows, like the Weakling or the Masochist, my wife will strap on her own Warrior sword and march off in service to her Queen Self to protect and provide for the kingdom. Believe me, women have these capacities and they can use them—just like men—for good and for ill.

But Deida makes another point in his book that’s of essential interest to our discussion. He says that “polarity” is the source of sexual attraction. Polarity, you can probably guess, refers to the opposing energies of the two sexes. He’s echoing my own belief that heterosexuality depends on an appreciation of gender and complementarity between the sexes. Through my work I’ve known many men who have desexualized their attractions toward the same–sex. From what I’ve observed, they seem to do this by creating masculine sufficiency in their lives. But many of these men have not developed heterosexuality and I’ve wondered over the years why not. It was just in the last few years that I finally understood the central role of the concepts we’ve been discussing related to genderedness and complementarity in developing opposite–sex attraction.

Now I realize that these men don’t develop attractions toward women because they aren’t experiencing genderedness and complementarity. I don’t mean to blame them for this—in most cases they haven’t consciously chosen to avoid this. I think the problem lies in the fact that those of us who have worked with these men have just begun to understand the secrets that might unlock their ability to experience women as a desirable opposite.